Sunday, September 9, 2007

Cars


The game performs as an accurate extension of the movie. It takes place after the events of the movie, but you don’t necessarily need to have seen it to know what’s going on. Even so, fans of the movie will find the popular talking motor vehicles just as outspoken as they were in the movie. It also helps that the majority of the cast voiced lines for the game too, although the enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be as high for all of them. Still, the presentation is very good, and you can get a definite expansion of how the movie looked by playing the game. The details aren’t as fine, obviously, but that’s not as easy to tell when you’re driving as 130 miles per hour. However, the soundtrack that plays while you drive is nice. It’s a mix of licensed tunes that are fitting for the setting, but I can’t really say they are the best choices in terms of quality. Regardless, it still makes an accurate atmosphere that replicates the movie fittingly.

As for gameplay, you can pretty much guess that a game based on cars is about driving. However, it’s somewhat more than that. Like Grand Theft Auto, it’s a sandbox game. Instead of getting out of the car to interact with things, you remain in the car and drive into specific circles to begin missions. These missions range from actual races to minigames that have you performing various tasks. One of the more hilarious ones is Tractor Tipping, where you sneak around a field tipping off sleeping tractors without being caught in spotlights. And yes, the tractors “moo” as they fall over.


The actual races are as full-fledged as any pure racing game. They range from off-road on the various roads you can find in the world of Cars to Grand Prix tracks. The latter has you doing a small minigame for Pit Stops, but otherwise they’re fairly closely related. You race against other cars in a track, either by holding the Wii-remote sideways to steer and having the buttons for acceleration and braking, or plug in your Nunchuk and use its control stick to steer instead. Either way works well, with the motion sensitive controls being the more intuitive. Regardless of whether you’re stick with the stick or with the remote, the control in Cars works very well.

The longevity of the game is somewhat shot, though. The game is extremely easy, to the point where you’ll rarely be challenged. I had more trouble with the hit detection then my opposing racers. There’s a large amount of game available to you, but you can most likely finish everything in less than 10 hours, although boredom might kick quite a few hours short of that. Still, there’s multiplayer racing if you have a friend, and the racing will keep the game in your Wii for a little longer.

Overall, there’s a fun racing game to be found here in Cars. It’s simplistic and easy, but if you have a friend it can be a good option to the other Wii racing games. Although I’d stick with Excite Truck, those looking for more speed in their Wii could see Cars as more unique approach.




Posted by wii-play at 2:37 AM
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